Philip Womack
A Sleuth Awoken
The Final Solution
By Michael Chabon
Fourth Estate 127pp £10
Michael Chabon’s previous novel, Summerland, was a sprawling fantasy set in another world, brimming with baseball and magic. This novella is a much tighter affair, and the only magic around is that of the human brain. But it has a dreamlike vividness which turns an everyday murder story into something enchanted.
The detective at the heart of the story is never named, but the clues are all there. It is the late 1930s. The great Sherlock Holmes is still alive, now old and physically wasted. Ogre-like, he inhabits a junk-filled cottage, where he keeps bees and ruminates on the past. He
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It wasn’t until 1825 that Pepys’s diary became available for the first time. How it was eventually decrypted and published is a story of subterfuge and duplicity.
Kate Loveman tells the tale.
Kate Loveman - Publishing Pepys
Kate Loveman: Publishing Pepys
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Arthur Christopher Benson was a pillar of the Edwardian establishment. He was supremely well connected. As his newly published diaries reveal, he was also riotously indiscreet.
Piers Brendon compares Benson’s journals to others from the 20th century.
Piers Brendon - Land of Dopes & Tories
Piers Brendon: Land of Dopes & Tories - The Benson Diaries: Selections from the Diary of Arthur Christopher Benson by Eamon Duffy & Ronald Hyam (edd)
literaryreview.co.uk
Of the siblings Gwen and Augustus John, it is Augustus who has commanded most attention from collectors and connoisseurs.
Was he really the finer artist, asks Tanya Harrod, or is it time Gwen emerged from her brother’s shadow?
Tanya Harrod - Cut from the Same Canvas
Tanya Harrod: Cut from the Same Canvas - Artists, Siblings, Visionaries: The Lives and Loves of Gwen and Augustus John by Judith Mackrell
literaryreview.co.uk